Unofficial news and tips about Google

March 18, 2010

Stop Buffering a YouTube Video

Sometimes you start watching a YouTube video and you realize that it's not very interesting. You pause the video, but YouTube continues to download the file. What can you do to stop the download?

Until now, a simple trick to stop buffering a YouTube video was to fast forward to the end of the video. The good news is that YouTube added an option to stop the download: right-click on the video and click on "Stop download".

YouTube's help center has more information about buffering. "The YouTube video player downloads a video as it plays. A buffer is a section of memory in your computer which allows for the simultaneous writing and reading of information -- on YouTube the buffered section is represented by the red section of the video timeline. The YouTube video player reads video information from one section of the buffer while writing to another. This kind of multitasking allows for smoother playback of video during a continuous process of downloading which is especially helpful for slower connections. "

Great, thanks. @rpetre and @Alex Another use case. In cases where you don't-have-good-bandwidth-connection, sometimes you just want to pause the download for a while while another more important thing is getting downloaded.

Oh man, I wanted this for so long. Shame they didn't get it quite right, though. The download should stop, yes, but the player should still continue playing the section already buffered.And to make it perfect, there should also be a "recontinue downloading" option.

Thanks for pointing out this feature. I saw your post in my RSS feed but didn't read the details at the time. Watching some YouTube vids today, I realized I needed to know this trick and Googled to find the post again.

Just tried it and it didn't work in Firefox. Closing the browser also does not stop it. I turn off my modem for a while. It needs to be off for about a minute or it continues to buffer even though the browser is closed.

Can say the same as the other Anonymous.. doesn't work in Win7 64Bit Pro, Firefox 3.6.12 and Adobe Flash 10.2 d161..I can see it on my Network Monitor that the video keeps downloading although I:- stopped the download via context menu- closed the browser tab- closed FirefoxOnly thing that helps is to go into advanced firewall settings for Win7 and block all incoming traffic for a moment.

This explanation makes absolutely no sense. It was written by a geek in geek speak for geeks.When I pause the video it stops period. Nothing happens. So how does this explain how to stop the buffering. Please enlighten me!

Too often people online keep acting like it has something to do with your connection, but it rarely does. Everything loads fine, except youtube in most cases. Then the only thing you can do is install video accelerator and optimize browsers.